The present invention relates to a method and a mechanism in and for a fastener dispensing operation, by which fasteners can be fed in a securely guided manner in the dispensing device, one at a time of the operation of the dispensing device. More particularly, the invention relates to such a method and mechanism in and for a fastener dispensing operation by which member fasteners integrally formed in a group or assembly can be individually successively fed to a prescribed position in the dispensing device in an orderly manner even in case the fastener assembly has member fasteners formed in irregular pitches.
Fasteners herein termed are typically such ones which are widely known as tagging pins or, more simply, tag pins normally molded from a plastic material integrally in groups and which are individually severed and dispensed one at a time by a dispensing device typically in fastening price tags or the like to merchandise or for purposes of connecting two or more items of merchandise to a unitary arrangement, for example for putting merchandise in pairs. Thus, the invention will be described and illustrated, by way of example, in connection with such tag pins.
Tag pins individually comprise a filament of a certain length which is not much great, an anchor bar formed at one or a lower end portion of the filament and a head formed at the other or upper end of the filament, all of which are integrally molded from a plastic material such as nylon for example. In the manufacture of such tag pins, they are formed in groups or assemblies each having a number of member pins connected in a row through a connecting member or members comprising for example a connecting bar, which is also called a guide bar. Then, in dispensing tag pins to thereby attach for example price tags to merchandise, it is operated to load a tag pin group or assembly in a dispensing device also called a tag attacher which has a pistol-like overall configuration and includes an application hollow needle and a trigger. Further, when the needle of the dispensing device is applied through a price tag and further through an object item of merchandise, the trigger is pulled, whereby a first pin is severed from the loaded tag pin assembly and becomes pushed out of the device through the needle. Then, the needle is pulled back out of the object item of the merchandise and the price tag, to accomplish a first cycle of the tag attaching operation, which operation will be recycled to fasten a number of tags to the corresponding number of object items of merchandise.
With tag pins today widely utilized in the described or other similar manners, their material comprise plastics for example nylon as before mentioned, and in consideration of lately developed various difficulties to do with petroleum, tag-pin manufacturers have tended to maximum curtail the consumption of material plastics by making each tag pin assembly having as great a number of its member pins as possible with the length minimized of the connecting bar which is simply discarded as waste when some or the whole of individual tag pins which the guide bar connects altogether to the assembly have been dispensed. The guide bar has a greater diametral size than tag pins or their filaments, and in terms of the amount consumed of the plastic material, it reaches 30 to 40% of a single tag pin group, so that it means an extreme importance to tag-pin manufacturers to make shorter the length of the connecting bar or guide bar relative to the number of tag pins which the guide bar carries thereon. To provide a greater number of tag pins with the length of the guide bar unchanged naturally results in a reduction in the inter-pin pitch in tag pin groups. In this connection, with conventional tag-pin dispensing devices, they are so structured as to rely, for means for feeding tag pins to their severing position in the device, on such a mechanism in which tag pins are engaged by teeth of a rotatable toothed wheel and fed through rotation of the wheel. Thus, in case of a change in the inter-pin pitch for example a reduction in the pitch as mentioned above, it inconveniently is indispensable with conventional tag attachers to accordingly change the pitch of the toothed wheel or, more practically, replace a currently employed toothed wheel by another one having a pitch suited to the changed inter-pin pitch.